Goal #1: How can you make $500 per month?

If you are a beginner in Internet marketing, earning at least $500 monthly should be your first goal. Why?

Many friends of mine have reached this aim without knowing advanced techniques of marketing. Their stories are very similar. One day, they started writing their own blogs. At first, they considered it just a hobby. But as they were continually producing quality content, the number of readers was growing to such an extent that it was worth using monetization techniques. The same ones as I will describe in this article.

Earning this amount of money has even achieved the teenage daughter of a friend of mine. If I remember correctly, the girl was about 14 or 15 years old when her mother proudly related how she accomplished it by writing a blog about her great hobby. It was a blog about riding a horse that I helped her install a year earlier.

Well, I guess if so many people around me have managed to earn about $500 per month, even a teenager, you will able to do it too. And a lot of time before you learn the advanced strategies to reach the goals of $5,000 and $50,000 per month that I explain in the later chapters of this guide.

Do not get me wrong, that does not mean there is no work associated. Neither I nor my friends know how to make a living without effort. However, I know the way, and I will share it with you, how you can do the necessary work and have fun at the same time.

3 common mistakes to avoid to achieve your goals in months rather than years

To earn $500 per month within 6 to 12 months you must work efficiently. If you avoid the following 3 most common beginner mistakes, you will be well on your way.

Error #1: Complicating things instead of writing a blog

How many ways to make money on the Internet do you know? I am sure you have heard of numerous opportunities. But which of the endless options will be the best for you?

What you are looking for should offer the potential to:

Generate residual income.

Make money through various ways.

Do not spend money neither on website design nor programming.

Start right away even if you have no programming and web design knowledge.

The solution that meets all these requirements is to write your own blog.

Do you have doubts? Imagine this: Your neighbor is setting up an eshop. He works the whole days to prepare a store, buys goods for sale, implements payment processor (or pays a lot of money to a programmer to do so), etc. And now imagine yourself: You are following simple tips from one of the next chapters of this guide. In 5 minutes you install your own blog. In a couple of other minutes you learn to handle it. You have everything ready to start. You would not change with your neighbor, would you?

By creating your own blog you will not only avoid the mistake of wasting a lot of time (and possibly also money). In addition, there are other advantages:

It is intuitive – I will show you how to install the blog and publish articles without any special knowledge. I know a way that is as easy as posting on Facebook.

Stable revenues – when using correctly social networks and the newsletter, as I will explain in the next chapters, you will create a community of loyal readers. Loyal readers = regular visits = stable income.

Alternative to traditional employment – in the country where I live, in Spain, 20% of the inhabitants (40% of young people) are unemployed. If you live in a country like that, instead of begging for a job, you can start making money with your blog right now.

Plugins – the ability to easily add advanced features to your blog without any programming. For example:

Paid ads – show ads on your blog and earn money.

Newsletter plugin – your readers can subscribe to the your newsletter so you can inform them when you publish a new article.

Social networks – makes it easy for your visitors to share your articles or follow you with a click on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

SEO plugin – helps improve the position of your blog on Google and increase the number of visitors (and your income).

Freedom – this is the most important advantage for me. As you see in the next photo, I never let a chance to work from a pleasant place. As bloggers we can write on any topic, anytime, anywhere. It is no problem to go on vacation for a few weeks when we want. Business owners such as eshop owners, service providers and other entrepreneurs can not do this without losing customers. We can.

No, this is not a stock photo. I am working in a park by the sea, taking advantage of the freedom that my work offers me.

I understand you perfectly. You have published your first posts and would like to increase the number of readers as soon as possible. However, is it a good idea to start promoting your blog at that time?

Do not forget that your goal is to create stable income. To achieve this you need loyal readers. So the key question is: How can you turn your blog visitors into loyal readers?

I think you guessed right. Offering them what they look for in your blog. The same as I do. Were you not looking for a way to make money online? Are you reading my post where I give you the solution? This is how things work. You simply have to produce quality content so that your audience has reason to re-read your posts over and over again.

I am not saying it is completely wrong to promote your blog after finishing your first posts. However, you should follow this rule: The fewer posts your blog has, the more you should write and the less promote it. For example:

Week

Posts in your blog

Sharing of your time

Week 1

3 posts in total

Writing: 100% – Promotion: 0%

Week 2

6 posts in total

Writing: 95% – Promotion: 5%

Week 3

9 posts in total

Writing: 90% – Promotion: 10%

Week 5

15 posts in total

Writing: 85% – Promotion: 15%

Week 10

30 posts in total

Writing: 80% – Promotion: 20%

Week 20

60 posts in total

Writing: 75% – Promotion: 25%

Even during the following weeks I recommend you spend at least 75% of your time writing new posts until you reach the goal of $500 per month. This will be the time for you to pay more attention to the promotion.

Error #3: Create a free blog and then lose money

There is no reason why it should be expensive to create your blog. The only way to make your blog really expensive is to create it using free services.

I think you are smart enough to realize that these services are not created for you to earn money, but for their owners to benefit from your work.

Successful bloggers do not use free services for good reasons. They know that there is always a small print hiding one or more of these problems:

You are not the owner of “your” blog. If you do not meet their conditions, they can delete it. In addition, the conditions can change at any time.

If they delete “your” blog, you will lose all regular readers. Free blogs usually use as their address a subdomain of the provider. Even if you do not lose all your posts (which often happens), you will not be able to use the old address. The one your visitors know. You will have to create a new one and start from scratch.

You work, they earn. They do not allow you to monetize “your” blog. They sell your advertising space.

Some allow you to monetize “your” blog. Even so, keep in mind that they have a legal right to change the conditions. It would not be the first time the owners banned the ads and put their own. In other words, if you make $500 per month with a free blog today, this money can flow into the pocket of the blog provider instead of yours tomorrow.

They do not let you install plugins. As you will see later, its correct use can multiply your profits.

You can not use Google Analytics. This tool gives you a lot of information about your readers. You need this information to efficiently plan your publications and marketing strategies.

As you see, working with a free blog is putting at risk months or years of your work. You can even lose your source of income completely.

Fortunately, even if you have already made this mistake, there is a solution – quality web hosting. I recommend you consider investing in it before it is too late.

Anyway, your goal is to earn, not spend a lot of money on hosting. Therefore, I dedicate one of the following chapters entirely to this subject. I will show you how to solve the hosting problem without having to invest more than 3% of your profits.

What is the best topic for your blog?

I know you’re eager to learn monetization techniques to achieve your first goal – the $500 per month. We are already close to this topic. But before we will talk about the content of your blog.

If you are already decided on what topic you are going to publish, you can skip this chapter. If not, let’s talk about your options.

As I promised, I’ll tell you how you can do the necessary work and have fun at the same time. Therefore, I will start with the following advice: Choose a topic that you are passionate about. Ask yourself: Is there anything in my life that interests me so much that I was willing to write about it without any reward? These are usually the themes that generate the most money. Why?

You have to be motivated enough to do all the work necessary to exceed the goal of $500 per month and continue toward $5,000 per month. Working just to earn money is exhausting. When you do something that excites you, you will have more energy because you will enjoy the way. Enjoying the way is in my opinion the key to being able to get the results in the future.

Still not sure about the topic of your blog? Here’s your inspiration:

Hobby:

Your existing hobby.

Find a new hobby. You will experience fun twice – when you learn step by step and then when you write about what you have learned.

Sports:

Sport you practice.

Sport you like.

Consider starting with a new sport. It is healthy, fun and will give you enough ideas for your articles.

Photoblog with pictures of:

Your travels.

Region where you live.

Flowers.

Animals:

Dogs or cats.

Pets from your home.

Exotic animals.

Recipes.

Movies or series.

Games:

Online games.

Games for computers.

Mobile games.

Programs you can handle.

Online services:

Reviews in which you explain the benefits they bring to the user.

Guides where you teach your visitors how to use them.

Travels:

Reports of places that attract tourists.

Guide of the city in which you live (what to do, where to eat, where to sleep, etc.).

Points of interest (palaces, castles, museums, etc.)

Training:

If you are, for example, a drugstore seller, you can post about using the products you know.

If you are a student, publish about your favorite school subject, for example, about foreign languages.

Events:

All cultural or sporting events in your city or region.

Focus on specific events throughout the country (for example, Folk concerts in Spain).

History.

Technology.

5 types of posts your readers will love

When you decide the topic of your blog, you should think about the type of your posts. What are the most used ones by the most influential bloggers in the world?

Reviews. The perfect way to recommend quality products and earn commission through affiliate programs every time one of your visitors buys the product. How the affiliate programs work I will explain in one of the following chapters.

How to do something. You know what problems or goals your readers have. In this type of article you should give them the solution.

Personal challenge. Let’s say you decided to run a marathon. You can describe your workouts and earn commission recommending products that you use (for example vitamins).

New trends. Is there anything new in the field you write about? Make a post on the topic. Articles about the new trends do not have much competition on Google. They can not have it because they are completely new. With this simple trick you can quickly increase the number of visitors to your blog.

Interviews. Why just earn money and have fun writing a blog if you can, in addition to this, meet new people? Be social and interview interesting people or other bloggers.

Where to look for inspiration for your articles?

Comments on your blog. David Risley, a blogger who earned more than $2,000,000 with his two blogs, reveals this method in an interview. He reads and answers the comments under his posts. This way, he finds questions that serve him as topics for his future articles. You can also search for comments on other blogs, especially if yours is new and you still do not have active readers.

Discussion Forums. What questions do people ask in forums thematically similar to your blog? Solve their doubts by writing an article on the topic.

Question and answer sites. Yahoo Answers and other similar websites where people ask questions can serve you the same way as forums.

Social networks. Search for Facebook groups thematically related to your blog. Find out what problems their members have. Also, look for inspiration on Twitter or Google Plus.

Your own experience. What questions do people have when learning things you write about? What were your doubts when you were learning?

Write down the ideas when writing your articles. This is my favorite method. When writing a post almost always come ideas for other topics that deserve their own article. Write down all the ideas and you will never again have to struggle to find new topics.

In my newsletter. If you want to receive my recommendations from time to time by email, subscribe to my newsletter.

How to monetize your blog?

To get rich, you have to be making money while you’re asleep.
~ David Bailey

David Bailey is right. You have the tool to achieve it – your blog. And I’m going to teach you how to use it correctly.

We already talked about the content of your blog. Now we have to turn it into money in your pocket.

Ad networks – the easiest way to start monetization

Alexa Mason, my favorite American blogger, regularly posts her income reports. According to her latest report, last month she earned $6,428. $2,503 of this sum got through the advertising networks.

Alexa is a typical blogger whose income is made up largely of banners shown on her blog. How can you do the same?

To monetize your blog showing banners choose one of the advertising networks and sign up there. You will get a banner code. In the admin panel of your blog, which we will talk about later, you will enter this code. From this moment the banners will be displayed in your blog.

How do ad networks work? The network has its advertisers and charges them for putting their banners on pages and blogs like yours. Then the network pays you for displaying the banners on your blog.

There are two most common forms of remuneration:

CPM: they pay you whenever a banner is shown to a visitor. You will earn from a few cents to several dollars per thousand impressions.

PPC: They pay you every time a visitor clicks on a banner. You’ll earn from a few cents to several dollars per click.

According to my experience, blogs with quality content earn more with the PPC model.

Where to start? The best known ad networks I recommend you try are:

Adsense

Bidvertiser

Chitika

Infolinks

Propeller Ads

Affiliate programs – the true pearl among forms of monetization

You will like this. High commissions and recurring rewards is what affiliate programs offer.

How do affiliate programs work? The advertiser gives you an affiliate link that leads to his website. This link contains a code that allows him to identify the visitors coming from your blog. You use this link to promote his product or service. You’ll earn a commission every time someone buys something on the advertiser’s website.

Commissions are usually several times higher than the rewards for the click (PPC banners) as I explained above.

In addition, the technology called cookies is used. Thanks to it you earn the commission even if the purchase happens days or weeks after the moment your visitor clicks on the affiliate link on your blog.

How much do bloggers earn from affiliate programs? According to the income reports that some of them publish, these programs form the largest part of their income.

One of them is Omar de la Fuente. 19 months after launching his blog called Hacia el autoempleo, which writes in Spanish, he published his monthly income:

Total income: €1,571

Affiliate program commissions: €1,005

Daily visits to your blog: 687

If you search blogger revenue reports on Google, you’ll see that this example is a typical case. So great is the potential of these programs that they can become the biggest source of your income.

However, this not all. Imagine that instead of receiving a commission for each purchase made by your visitors, you get paid every month. You’ll probably wonder how it’s possible…

There are services that charge customers monthly. This way they can pay you a commission every time the customer pays the monthly bill.

Therefore, you have in your hands the opportunity to earn passive income. When choosing the affiliate programs for your blog, focus on:

Membership sites.

Services that charge monthly.

Eshops that pay you not only for the customer’s first purchase, but also for all of the following.

Where can you find affiliate programs? The most popular affiliate networks that put together thousands of advertisers in one place are:

CJ affiliate by Conversant

ShareASale

Amazon Associates

ClickBank

Rakuten Affiliate Network

Many advertisers offer affiliate programs directly. That is, you will not find them in any affiliate network, but directly on their pages.

How to choose the best affiliate programs? To choose the most profitable programs, the key is the affinity of the advertiser with the topic of your blog. If for example you write a blog dedicated to the training of athletes, it will be better to promote vitamins than mortgages.

Affiliate networks have lists of advertisers sorted by categories. Choose programs from the category closest to the topic of your blog.

Do you want to multiply your commissions? Use these proven ways to incorporate affiliate links into your posts:

Reviews of the products you want your audience to buy. Link the product with your affiliate link.

Lists like The 5 best products to achieve something. Link all products listed with your affiliate link.

Comparisons of two or three products. Describe its advantages and disadvantages and, as always, use your affiliate link.

Earn $100 + per hour from sponsored articles

Whenever I talk about this topic with my friends who are bloggers, I get the impression that the demand for sponsored articles is growing incredibly. Although their blogs are not the most visited, brands flood them with so many offers that they sometimes have no choice but to reject some of them.

For brands and businesses this is a great opportunity to influence your target audience. According to the study by Burst Media, the brands earned $6 in return for every dollar invested in sponsored articles. Seeing this data, I am not surprised that there is so much demand to pay bloggers to publish this kind of articles.

What should you know if you want to use this form of monetization? First, be sure to put contact information to your blog so the brands can contact you. They will usually offer you one of the following collaboration models:

They write the article and will pay you to publish it on your blog. If you have a blog with a solid readership, you should ask for at least $100 for each sponsored article.

You write the article. In most cases the advertisers want you write a post with at least 300 words, which means 15 – 30 minutes of your time. Yes, that requires some work on your part. However, given the hourly rate, it’s better than selling hamburgers at a fastfood, do not you think?

Sponsored posts on social networks

It is good practice to create accounts on social networks, especially in:

Facebook

Twitter

Google Plus

As I will explain in detail in the chapter about creating your blog, with the use of the right plugin you can efficiently convert your readers into followers in social networks. Why should you do it?

There are 2 reasons:

Traffic. Whenever you write a new post, share it on social networks. This way you increase the number of readers and earn more with banners and affiliate programs. More visitors simply means more money for you. As the number of your followers will grow, your earnings after writing a new post will be every time higher.

Sponsored posts. They work in the same way as sponsored articles. Brands look for opportunities to get the attention of their target audience. This represents an opportunity for you to earn money by sharing information about their products or services with your followers.

Cost per lead (CPL) – they pay you for referring a potential customer

Technically, this way of monetization works like affiliate programs. The advertiser gives you a link with a code that allows him to identify the visitors coming from your blog. You use this link to recommend his page to your readers. So what is the difference between affiliate programs and CPL?

In order to earn money with CPL campaigns, your visitors do not have to buy any products. They just have to do an action called lead like:

Sign up on the advertiser’s site.

Fill out a form to request more information about the advertiser’s product.

Participate in an online contest.

How much will you earn with CPL campaigns? The commissions for the lead range from tens of cents to several dollars. To maximize your profits, it does not matter so much the commission offered by the advertiser. The essential thing is the affinity of the advertiser with the topic of your blog. Always ask yourself: Who are my readers?What interests them, what do they need? After answering these questions, opt for a CPL campaign that offers your visitors something they need.

Where will you find CPL campaigns? Since it is technically a type of affiliate program, affiliate networks like CJ affiliate by Conversant or ShareASale are the places where you should start. In these pages you will also find guides explaining how to implement these campaigns in your blog.

Content lockers – “sell” extras without your readers having to pay for them

Imagine this scenario: You have identified the most profitable posts. You want to get the most out of them. So you will create an eBook in which you will publish your best articles. It will be useful for the user to have all the information compiled in this way. However, how many people would be willing to pay for that if they can read the same content on your blog for free?

Luckily, there is a way you can make money with this eBook without your readers paying for it. The solution is called content lockers .

How do content lockers work?

You have some content like the eBook in the previous example.

You add a content locker to your blog. It shows your visitor several offers.

The visitor earns points by completing the offers.

Once he gains the given number of points, the content locker lets him access your content.

You earn money for offers completed by your visitor.

You decide how much you will earn. This is what I like most about content lockers. You can decide how many points your visitors must get before accessing your content. The more points they accumulate, the more you will earn.

What can you monetize through content lockers? Not only eBooks, but almost any content: videos, photographs, scripts…

Where can you get a content locker? The best known providers are:

CPAgrip

AdWork Media

CPA Lead

Adscend Media

ShareCash

The implementation of a content locker is not complicated. These companies offer tutorials explaining step by step how to install it on your blog.

3 first steps to increase visits to your blog

“Well, I already know how to monetize my blog. What else do I have to do to surpass the first goal of $500 per month that you told me about earlier?”, you may ask.

Good question. As you probably know, the money is in the traffic. You need a decent number of daily visitors to achieve the first goal as soon as possible and be able to continue towards really good earnings. The next 3 first steps will do the trick.

Step #1: Increase the number of visitors through social networks

Create a Facebook page, Google Plus and a Twitter account. When writing a new article, share it on all these networks.

Participate in Facebook groups related to the topic of your blog. Take advantage of them to link to your blog posts.

Use hashtags in your tweets. This way not only your followers will be able to see them, but also other Twitter users. This way you will increase the traffic from this social network.

Follow other people on Twitter. Choose those who publish on topics related to the topic of your blog. Not only will you find a source of inspiration for your future articles, but some of them will follow you as well. So they will be able to visit your blog whenever you share a new article through a tweet.

Step #2: Let RSS work for you

While on social networks you have to manually share each of your articles, there are websites where you can post links to your latest posts automatically. How is it possible?

If you follow my advice in the chapter where I will explain how you should create your blog, your server will automatically generate an RSS feed.

What is the RSS feed? Your blog will create a file with titles and URLs of your latest posts. This file can be used in several ways to promote your articles. I recommend you use these 3 strategies:

1. Blog aggregators publish headlines from various blogs. However, they do not show the article. They only link to the original posts. So you can add your RSS feed to these websites to increase the number of new visitors to your blog. The cool thing about this tool is the fact that once you add the RSS feed to a blog aggregator, you will get a flow of traffic that will last for years.

Search blog aggregators on Google and you’ll be amazed at the number of opportunities to promote your blog this way.

2. Blogs with CommentLuv plugin represent another option to get more readers. When you write a comment on one of them, the CommentLuv plugin will search the RSS feed on your blog. When found, your comment will be published together with a link pointing to one of your last blog posts.

Searching on Google the phrase CommentLuv + keyword related to the topic of your blog you will find the best places to use this strategy.

3. RSS subscription allows your readers to see links to your posts in RSS readers. You may have never heard of this tool. However, only Feedly, the most popular RSS reader, has 15,000,000 users. These subscribe to the feeds of their favorite blogs to be able to access all their articles from the same place. So imagine how much traffic you can get this way.

The best thing is that when your visitor wants to subscribe, the RSS reader will find the feed and the user from this moment will see links to your posts without any other action on your part.

Step #3: Do basic SEO to help Internet users to find your posts on Google

If you are looking for something on the Internet, how do you do it? Using Google, right? The same as more than 3.600.000.000 Internet users. Surely you will want to know how to take advantage of it to earn more money.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most used strategy by successful bloggers. It serves to get the top spots in Google’s search results. The position of your posts on Google is determined by hundreds of factors. But only a few really matter. Let’s see them.

On-page optimization is the optimization within your blog. Fortunately, you do not have to learn all the things related to the source code of your blog. By following my advice in the chapter on creating the blog, you will have at your disposal a plugin that will do all the work.

Off-page optimization means mainly getting backlinks from other blogs and websites that point to your blog. How to get them?

Initially you invest most of your time to create quality content. Over time you will see that some of your readers link to your posts. Gradually, the position of your blog on Google will improve.

The tactics of RSS and social networks, which we talked about earlier, can also provide benefits for better positioning in Google.

Ready, steady, go!

Congratulations! Now you have enough knowledge to be able to surpass the first goal of your blogger career – the $500 per month.

Do you already see the money in your bank account? No? It will be because you have not started yet. It is time to change it.

Let’s create your blog

A good or bad web hosting service can be the difference between success and failure of a blogger.
~ Abraham Lincoln

I am not entirely sure if Abraham Lincoln was the author of this quote 🙂 However, from my own experience, I can assure you that there is a lot of truth behind these words.

When I created my first website, in 1999, I made the same mistake as millions of others. I hosted it on a free hosting service. My traffic grew and I was excited. Until the day when the number of daily visitors fell suddenly from 200 to 0. Why? The hosting company ceased to exist and so my website. As the service did not offer a domain, I could not move my website to another hosting. I had to start from scratch.

Well, I opted for a paid hosting. Unfortunately, in those days I did not know how to choose a reliable web hosting provider. My web was inaccessible several hours almost every day. Customer service worked as if it did not exist. But I learned a lesson: even the paid web hosting is not the guarantee that everything goes well.

In 2005 I set up my own web hosting company – MarbleHost.com – in order to give a solution to people who want to make money on the Internet without unnecessary stress. This way I can personally guarantee that your blog will work as you expect.

What advantages will you enjoy creating your blog at MarbleHost.com?

Do not worry, I will not bore you with geeky things (although if you prefer, you can visit http://www.marblehost.com/hosting-plans.php to see a full list of features). I will only make a brief summary of the most important for you.

It simply works. This blog is hosted at MarbleHost.com and, as you can see, works perfectly.

You will create your blog easily. You do not have to install it nor prepare the database. Just select the WordPress option under Choose a pre-installed application on the signup form. Your blog will be installed automatically, without the need of any other action from your part.

So easy is the installation of your blog.

You will be able to use it without previous experience. You will have at your disposal control panel so intuitive that tasks like creating a new email or installing another blog will be a question of a few seconds. Also, if you have any questions, the customer service team is ready to help you 24 hours a day.

The latest technologies to increase the speed of your blog. Thanks to the use of SSDs with data caching instead of traditional hard drives, the loading speed of your blog will increase 3 times. ZFS LZ4 compression and cloud hosting platform accelerate the speed of your blog even more.

High level of security. There are not many more worse things in a blogger’s life than finding one day your blog hacked. To avoid this, your blog will be protected against hacker attacks by ModSecurity Firewall and Outgoing Connections Manager .

Always the latest version of PHP to ensure all your plugins work. There are plugins that do not work with some previous versions of PHP. Therefore, you will always have the latest version available to you.

What type of web hosting is right for your blog?

The first question that comes to mind is what type of web hosting is the most appropriate for your blog?

Unless you already have a very popular blog with thousands of daily visitors, I recommend you choose the cheapest option – web hosting. Although even the most robust solution, dedicated servers, does not cost more than most people spend every month on transport to work (from $89 a month, which as a professional blogger working from home you could invest with no problem thanks avoiding the transport costs), you can get a web hosting fulfilling all your expectations for a fraction of this amount.

You can choose from 4 web hosting plans:

Enterprise plan – allows you to host an unlimited number of domains. It also offers a dedicated IP address. Even if your blog was just a hobby and you did not feel like working hard enough to earn more than $500 per month, investing $12.99 a month in this plan would be less than 3% of your profits.

Corporate plan – is the plan that most bloggers choose. It also allows you to host an unlimited number of domains, without the dedicated IP address (not necessary for your blog). For the investment of $9.99 a month offers the best relation between the price and the number of domains allowed.

Business plan – investing $6.49 a month you can host up to 5 domains.

Starter plan – the most economical solution lets you host 1 domain with the investment of only $4.99 per month.

How to choose a domain name?

What is a domain and what is it good for? It is a unique name that allows your visitors to access your blog. When writing the name of your domain in the address bar of the browser the main page of your blog will appear. For example, the domain of my blog is moneytoplist.com.

How to choose the domain name? Most bloggers follow one of these methods:

They use their name, for example, johnsmith.com. Ideal for building your personal brand. It also offers the ability to create email accounts such as john@johnsmith.com.

Others use words that have something to do with the niche of their blog. Moneytoplist.com is an example of this strategy.

At http://www.marblehost.com/order/ you can check if your domain name is still available. If you have a good idea for your domain name, you can register it there along with a hosting plan. Do not forget that anyone can register any domain name. So register it before someone else does.

Finally! You can create your blog now

Great! You’ve got it. You have learned the whole theory. You’ve done a good job and you deserve the reward – becoming a real blogger earning money online.

Select the WordPress option under Choose a pre-installed application, fill in other fields on the signup form and follow the instructions on the screen.

Step #2: Access admin panel of your blog. You will receive an email with detailed instructions how to do it.

Step #3: You can customize your blog now. Change the design by installing one of thousands of free wordpress themes, install recommended plugins and publish your first post. I’m not going to waste your time explaining how to do it because it’s incredibly easy. In the admin panel you will find help in which everything is explained so clearly that even your grandmother would be able to understand it 🙂

I recommend you install the following plugins:

Yoast SEO – will help you improve on-page optimization. This way your blog will achieve better position in Google and the number of your readers will increase (and especially your income).

W3 total cache – speed up the loading time of your blog. This not only helps to improve your position in Google, but is important for your visitors. You do not like waiting for ages when visiting your favorite websites, right?

Google Analytics – the easiest way to get traffic statistics. Later we’ll talk more about how to take advantage of this tool.

GetSocial – will help you generate more traffic through social networks. This plugin offers several functions, including the possibility to add buttons to your blog with which your readers can share your articles. You can also use this plugin to make it easier for your readers to follow you in social networks.

AdRotate – lets you add banners in your blog so you can make money showing ads as I explained before.

All these plugins I have tried to install on MarbleHost.com, so I can guarantee you that they work perfectly on this web hosting.

Goal #2: How can you make $5,000 per month?

However, there is no reason for you to settle for this income. Now I’m going to reveal you less known methods to surpass the second goal of the $5,000 per month as soon as possible.

18 little-known strategies with which some teenagers earn more than their parents

The strategies we are going to talk about can be divided into three groups:

Analysis

New forms of monetization

Traffic multiplication

Strategy #1: Analyze your traffic using Google Analytics

If you followed my advice in the chapter where I explained how to create your blog, you already have installed a plugin which makes possible to implement the Google Analytics code.

Now you should create the Google Analytics account (it’s free) to get the tracking code. After inserting this code in the plugin, you will have at your disposal very useful statistics.

How to take advantage of these statistics to multiply your income? Sooner or later, you will realize that a small part of your posts attracts several times more readers than others. Logically, these articles will also earn you several times more money.

And if you could multiply the percentage of these posts? Then you could multiply your income. The good news is that you can.

Here is the secret. Everything you need to know you will find in your Google Analytics account. It contains a lot of statistics. To avoid confusion, I will tell you which are the ones that will serve you best to increase the income of your blog.

Referrals. Which websites are your visitors coming from? You may have commented posts on other blogs and the traffic may come from one of them. In such a case, there is nothing easier than to comment more articles on that blog to multiply this source of visitors. Later we’ll talk more about how to take advantage of your comments on other blogs.

Organic search. Discover keywords your visitors used to find your articles on search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.). Take advantage of this information to write more posts about similar topics. For example, let’s say you’ve got a lot of readers looking for how to learn English fast. In this case, it is very likely to work well for you to write about how to learn Spanish fast or how to learn German fast.

Social networks. What are the social networks that increase your traffic the most? Focus your effort on them.

How long your visitors stay reading the particular posts. Learn what content your audience is most interested in. Write more in-depth posts on the topic. Sooner or later, you will see the results not only in statistics, but especially in your bank account.

Strategy #2: Analyze the conversion rate of affiliate programs

I will assign you a math exercise:

John wants to make money with affiliate programs.He has to decide between product A and product B. Product A offers a 40% commission and its price is $50.Product B also costs $50, but the commission is only 20%.With which of the programs will John earn more money?

It’s a trick question. Why?

Because we do not know the conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who purchase the product). Look at this example:

Product A:
100 of your readers visit the product A website through your affiliate link.
3 of them buy the product.
How much do you earn?
3 sales * $20 (40% of $50) = $60

Product B:100 of your readers visit the product B website through your affiliate link.
10 of them buy the product.
How much do you earn?
10 sales * $10 (20% of $50) = $100

As you can see, the conversion rate may be more important than the commission rate. Therefore, I always recommend trying more affiliate programs. After comparing the results, take advantage of the potential of the best programs.

Also, think about this: If an affiliate program has an exceptionally high conversion rate, it is because the product is successful among your readers. So recommending this product in your future campaigns you will provide them added value. Everyone will win, you and your visitors.

Strategy #3: Monetize your blog with an own product

Is it worthwhile to create your own product?

On the one hand, it requires more work than promoting affiliate programs. On the other hand, you’ll earn more. Instead of receiving commissions, you’ll keep 100% of the payments from your customers.

Does that sound good to you? Well here’s some inspiration for your own products:

Provide consulting services.

Create online courses.

Organize paid webinars.

Write an eBook.

In most cases, successful bloggers use these two ways of selling their own products:

They recommend their products in the same way as they promote affiliate programs.

They create their own affiliate program and let others to promote their products. There are several plugins with which you can create your affiliate program.

How membership sites work? It is a place with private content that can be accessed only by paying members. For example:

A VIP section of your blog with premium content (not published elsewhere on your website).

A forum for members where you pay them individual attention.

How to create a membership site? There are several plugins for this. Just go to the plugins section in the admin panel of your blog and choose one that suits you best.

Strategy #5: Sell your advertising space directly

If you’ve done everything that I recommend in the chapter Let’s create your blog, you already have installed a plugin to put advertisements on your blog. This plugin will serve you to employ this strategy.

Are you already displaying ads of an ad network? I do not know exactly how much you earn, but I know it can be more. Why?

Ad networks charge advertisers. A portion of the income goes to the ad network and another to you. Selling your ad space directly on your blog, 100% money goes into your pocket.

Most successful bloggers use the following ways to attract advertisers:

They create on their blogs a page dedicated to advertisers. This page should contain especially:

Blog statistics (number of visitors, countries they come from, etc.).

Description of target audience (who are your readers, what are their interests).

What kind of advertising formats do you offer (banners, text ads, etc.).

Prices.

They offer advertising space in forums that have sections designated to this type of business.

When they send the newsletter to their subscribers, they sometimes mention the advertising options.

Strategy #6: Accept donations

Buy me a beer.

No, I do not want you to invite me to a restaurant. You may have seen this call to action in some blogs. This is a popular way bloggers ask for donations to their readers. Buy me a beer or buy me a coffee sounds better than make a donation, right?

There are lots of plugins you can easily add to your blog to give your readers the opportunity to support you.

How much money can you expect? That depends a lot on how your visitors perceive the value of your blog. While some bloggers, according to their earnings reports, are earning thousands of dollars every month this way, others consider this strategy a waste of time.

Be social. Enjoy your way to the decent income. Interviewing other bloggers or other people who have something to say to your audience is not just a pleasant way to create content for your blog. There are more advantages:

Free content. Most of the content is provided by the interviewee. In addition, this form of posts is popular among Internet users.

Free knowledge. You can write only about topics you know. But the interviewee can share knowledge that you do not have.

Traffic. People, after being interviewed, tend to show the interview to their audience. How they do it? Linking to post with the interview on your blog. That gives them more credibility in the eyes of their visitors and you get quality traffic this way. In addition, the links pointing to your blog are the most important SEO factors. They help improve your position in Google and so also get more search engine traffic.

Strategy #8: Boost the traffic of your blog through email marketing

Ask an expert blogger what is his favorite strategy to monetize his blog. He would most likely tell you the often repeated saying: The money is in the list.

Using a plugin or services of an email marketing company (which is what I recommend) you can create a subscription form. This will allow you to contact your subscribers by email later.

There are several uses of a list. Especially employ these two steps:

Inform your readers whenever you publish a new article. You will increase traffic to your blog this way.

Send your best advice not published in your blog. Sometimes recommend a quality product using an affiliate link. You will be surprised how many commissions you earn this way.

Strategy #9: Boost the traffic of your blog with viral marketing

Be creative. Play with your ideas. Create a controversial, funny or interesting enough content so people share it with their friends.

Do not limit yourself to your blog. Try also:

Videos

Infographics

Posts on social networks

Combine creatively these options. For example:

Post a video with viral potential on YouTube and it share on social networks. Mention your blog in the video and in the description that appears below it.

Create an infographic and spread it on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

Strategy #10: Boost the traffic of your blog talking with other bloggers

Would you like to get more traffic, have fun talking with other bloggers and learn something new at the same time? Then this is the perfect strategy for you.

Read blogs of people who write about things related to the topic you write about. So you learn something new and find inspiration for your future posts.

Then make a comment. Give honest feedback to the author of the post, ask something or provide some interesting information. Just be social. You will achieve more than a conversation. Most blogs give you the opportunity to fill in your name and URL of your blog at the time to write a comment. After submitting the comment, your name will form a link pointing to your blog.

Also, if you followed my advice in chapter Let’s create your blog, you have an RSS feed. When commenting on blogs with CommentLuv plugin, it will look for the RSS feed on your domain. When found, your comment will be published with a link pointing to one of your recent posts.

Write useful comments. It’s the key. The more readers will notice your comment, the more will visit your blog.

Strategy #11: Boost the traffic of your blog with pingbacks

There is one more way to get a link in the comments section of other blogs. It allows the technology called pingbacks.

How do pingbacks work? Imagine you write a post in which you link to an article on a blog of your friend. Your blog will automatically notify your friend’s blog about this link. Among the comments under the article of your friend a link to your article will appear.

For this to work, you need a blog with pingback technology. If you created your blog as I recommend in this article, you do not have to worry about this. In this case, you have pingbacks enabled by default. If you want to disable them for some reason, you can do so in the settings (in the comments section).

Strategy #12: Boost the traffic of your blog participating in forums

Forum marketing also offers you the opportunity to socialize with other people, have fun and learn something new at the same time.

How to get the most out of this strategy? The most profitable for you are the forums where people talk about issues related to the topic of your blog. Also, participate in those which:

Allow you to include a link to your blog on your profile page.

Let you create a signature. The signature can contain a link to your blog. This link appears below all the posts you write in the forum.

Through the forums you will get direct traffic, and if you do it well, very stable. The threads of forums that rank well on Google may receive steady traffic for years. Follow the same rule you should apply when leaving comments on other blogs – contribute with content that brings value. This way, more people will notice your signature and visit your blog.

Some forums have a section where you can advertise your blog for free. Usually you have to be member of the forum for some time and/or write a certain number of posts before you can post in this section.

In addition, some of the forum links can help improve Google ranking of your blog.

Strategy #13: Boost the traffic of your blog creating videos

Every day billions of video views are generated. So why not take advantage of this trend to increase revenue from your blog?

How do you get people to see your videos? Follow the golden rule – create quality content. Upload this content to:

Websites like YouTube or Dailymotion. These websites have millions of visitors, moreover, YouTube videos usually rank well in Google.

Social networks. Share videos not only with your followers. You can also draw the attention of thousands of people in Facebook groups or using hashtags in Twitter.

How to convert the video viewers to blog visitors? Always mention your blog in the video. Make a call to action – mention a good reason why viewers should visit it. Do not forget to put a link to your blog in the video description.

You probably wonder what kind of video is worth creating. Look at these examples:

Explain how to do something.

Answer questions from your readers.

Review products that talk about in your blog. You can combine this strategy with affiliate marketing. So instead of just increasing traffic, you will also earn more in commissions from these programs.

Strategy #14: Boost the traffic of your blog through guest posts

Get ready for a lot of work. But also to enjoy great results.

There are two ways how you can use this powerful strategy:

Write articles for other blogs. As the guest author you need to present yourself to readers. Normally, this presentation consists of a paragraph about you and includes a link to your blog. It will serve you to drive traffic to your blog and in many cases will help improve the position of your blog in search engines.

Let other bloggers to write for you. The guest author will publish an article on your blog. You will get a free post. Once Google begins to show the article in the search results, your blog will achieve more visits.

In both cases it is a very powerful strategy. Either you earn more money through your posts on other blogs or thanks the content on yours.

Strategy #15: Boost the traffic of your blog with other social networks

If you remember, we have discussed the use of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. However, there are more social networks. All of them give you an opportunity to draw the attention of its users, convert them into your readers and increase your income.

What are the social networks that I recommend you?

LinkedIn. According to a recent study by HubSpot, LinkedIn is 277% more effective than Facebook and Twitter for leads capture. How to take advantage of it? Participate in groups and establish relationship with professionals in your niche.

Pinterest. It works differently from social networks like Facebook. Serves for sharing images. Therefore, you will get the best results by sharing infographics or images related to the topics of your posts.

Instagram. Use it to share pictures or short videos. Use hashtags to improve the visibility of your content.

Strategy #16: Boost the traffic of your blog through social bookmarking

Reddit, StumbleUpon or Digg. These are examples of social bookmarking websites.

How do they work? Each of these services applies its own rules, but all of them have one thing in common – you can share your favorite links with the community. The most popular links tend to attract a lot of traffic. So take the opportunity to share the articles of your blog.

I know what you’re thinking. Is it worth organizing a contest? What to offer as a prize without having to invest money?

Let’s see.

Why to create a contest on your blog?

Contests attract new visitors. And many, if you do it right.

Think well about the conditions for entering the contest. You can ask participants to follow you on social networks or subscribe to your newsletter.

How do you achieve that all participants would be potential customers? This is very easy. Offer as prize one of your products or services you promote your blog. If someone wants to win that prize, it is almost certain that he is interested in the topic of your blog and related products.

If you do not have your own product yet, try to get as a prize one of those you promote through affiliate programs. Propose to the company that sells it to sponsor your contest.

Do you want to attract a crowd of participants? In Google you will find plenty of online contests directories. Most of them will allow you to place a link to your competition on their website for free. Also do not forget the power of social networks and social bookmarking.

To create a contest on your blog I recommend you install one of the corresponding plugins. Simply access the admin panel of your blog and make a search in the plugins section.

Let me guess. You’ve always believed that this strategy was only for large companies. Well I have good news for you – it’s not.

How do you get your blog to appear in the press? In addition to the obvious solution – to create a content of exceptional quality or offer a service of great value for free – there is another way.

Have you ever noticed that a lot of studies are often cited the press? So elaborate one, publish it on your blog and send a press release.

It is not as laborious as it sounds. Create a poll on your blog. Ask your newsletter subscribers to participate. In a few days you will get necessary data.

How to spread the press release?You can send it directly to reporters or use one of the services that are responsible for the distribution of press releases to several newspapers.

There are two good reasons to use this strategy:

This way, you will get high quality links pointing to your blog. Actually, this kind of links is one of the best to rank your blog on Google.

If the press release appears in an important newspaper, you can expect a significant source of traffic.

Goal #3: How can you earn $50,000 per month?

Very good! Now you know everything you need to surpass the second goal of $5,000 in monthly earnings. Now you “only” need work hard and realize your dreams using the strategies I have revealed to you in this article.

You might be surprised to see how short is this last chapter in which I describe the way to the income of $50,000 and more per month. It is because at this point of your career you have enough theoretical knowledge.

To move you forward opt for another approach – multiply the results of your work:

Increase the number of your blogs. If you can earn $5,000 per month with one blog, why not earn $50,000 per month with 10 blogs?

Of course, you cannot do all the work yourself. Hire freelancers through markets like Fiverr or search them in the appropriate sections of Internet marketing forums.

Multiply the number of visitors to your blogs with paid ads. Now, you surely are able to calculate how much money you earn on average from every visitor. So look for opportunities to get quality traffic through pay per click advertising (PPC).

I will show you some numbers to give you better idea how much successful bloggers spend on paid advertising and freelancers:

Abby Lawson was earning between $30,000 and $40,000 with his blog called Just a Girl and Her Blog in recent months. She spends about $1,000 a month on his assistant and roughly the same amount of money on paid advertising.

Pat Flynn, according to his latest earnings report, earned $167,314 with his blog Smart Passive Income last month. $36,983 spent mostly on assistants, writers and TV production for SPI.

$20,927 earned and $456 spent on Facebook ads Matthew Woodward, according to the latest monthly report income on his blog matthewwoodward.co.uk.

Final summary

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Now it’s your turn to answer the only question with which I cannot help you: What are you going to buy with all the money? 🙂

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